


Fate Breaker

by tsohg a ma I (NinjaGirl2211)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Bad Luck, Breaking the Laws of the Universe Has Unintended Consequences, Curse Breaking, Curses, F/M, Including People, Lots of things get broken, Morally Ambiguous Characters, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past life, Soul Magic, This May or May Not Work Out to Their Advantage, Tom Riddle is a Sociopath, Unreliable Memories, Unreliable Narrator, Young Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-05 17:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14623818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinjaGirl2211/pseuds/tsohg%20a%20ma%20I
Summary: What is the difference between dreams and memory?It's a hazy line between the two, sometimes.For Lucy Hitchens, telling them apart is particularly tricky.But she will learn that some memories leave a mark...and some of these marks never disappear.Not even after you die.Born under an unlucky star, the universe seeks to regain the equilibrium that was lost when Lucy's soul entered it. Some laws are never meant to be broken, and some people are never meant to exist. Fate demands tribute for this violation. And the only tithe it will accept is the girl's life, bathed in blood and in tears... Fate finds the perfect instrument for this unholy baptism in one Tom Marvolo Riddle.But Lucy never believed in fate, nor in curses.And she's always been good at breaking things...





	1. Two Bats in a Belfry

Lucy wasn’t concerned with making friends.

She wasn’t staying here long.

Grandma just needed to get better first; she always got better eventually.

She was sure they’d help her at the hospital…strange as it was. Each floor appeared to house people with all sorts of outlandish maladies, and all the doctors were dressed in ridiculously blinding lime-green scrubs with highly impractical trailing hems and sleeves. She’d been camped out in the visitor’s lounge for a full day, eating biscuits from a tray which—oddly enough—appeared to never be empty, before her uncle came for her. Actually, he was more of a second cousin once removed, but Uncle was less of a mouthful, and it suited him better, Lucy thought. They’d only see each other on designated holidays, but he was a decent man, if a little dour and perpetually down on his luck. He always brought her nice, thick books to read, and always on such diverse, interesting subjects, so she was always happy when he came for a visit. She couldn’t stay with him though, because the tenement he lived in didn’t allow children. Or pets, for that matter, her uncle informed her gloomily. She also understood that staying with any other members of their extended family wouldn’t work out either. And besides, she’d never met any of them…

“Trust me,” Uncle mumbled darkly to her when she’d mentioned this, “you don’t _want_ to…”

And that was the end of that conversation.

On that ominous note, he’d led her by the hand to the looming brick building near Vauxhall Road. It had a barred gate made up of wrought iron pikes out front, above which an antiquated sign proclaimed the facility as none other than Wool’s Orphanage. On either side, the gate was lined by thick pillars and a tall brick wall topped by dangerously sharp turrets that made Lucy unsure if it was there to keep people in or out, and concluded that in either case, it would surely accomplish the task. The screechy gate led them into a small, paved courtyard which looked to have seen better days. The mortar beneath their feet was crumbled and decaying, making way for crabgrass to sneak up between the discolored bricks. They had to duck underneath a clothesline some of the older residents were tending to with cheerless faces; they didn’t even look up at the newcomers as they passed. And before Lucy was led into the building proper, she took one last look at the towering structure, noticing some of the square panes in the lofty front windows had been shattered. Crows circled around the belfry, and she wouldn’t be surprised if there were bats nesting up there too…

Something about the place was unsettlingly familiar.

She ruminated on that, sitting on her trunk outside the Head Matron’s office while she and her uncle conversed within. As they made arrangements, Lucy noted that while the outside of the building was rather downtrodden, while still rather shabby, the inside was fastidiously clean. The walls bore no adornments—not even educational posters, or horrendous macaroni art as one might expect in a children’s establishment. In contrast to her expectations, the place was rather joyless and austere…efficient—but only just.

She didn’t _want_ to stay here.

All her books were back at Grandma’s house—she hadn’t the room for them in her trunk, and her uncle had advised her to bring only the bare essentials. She’d even had to leave Puff, her stuffed dragon behind. Uncle said it might scare the other children, which Lucy thought was ridiculous. It only moved when you weren’t looking directly at it…though she still wasn’t entirely sure about that. Things were a little…different at Grandma’s house. Sometimes things moved around without anyone around to move them. She was pretty sure it was haunted, but she liked it anyway. It had charm, and character, and it always smelled like the cinnamon apple tarts Grandma liked to bake—like _home_.

Grandma couldn’t get better soon enough in Lucy’s opinion.

“Now then, young lady…” The Head Matron bustled out of her office with a strained smile for Lucy. She didn’t seem unkind at least, which was the important thing, she noted. “You’ve been very patient and well behaved. That’s always something we like to see here at Wool’s. I’m sure you’ll get along just fine.” Another strained smile and she asked, “Would you like to say goodbye to your cousin before we get you settled in?”

She looked to her uncle—cousin, rather—and quickly moved to hug him around the middle. He floundered a little at the unexpected gesture, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with her at first before moving to hug her back. His long, old fashioned overcoat smelled like good books, antiques, and myrrh.

“I’ll miss you,” she said truthfully, looking up to his handsome face, which was almost always understated and obscured by his longish dark hair. “Will you come back to visit?”

“You know I have work… And my employer is always in a foul temper…” he answered ruefully. Then he added, “…But I will try my best.” He patted her head of dark, kinky curls a little uncertainly, then sighed with a truly pained look on his pale, grim features. “This won’t be forever, Lucinda.”

“Just until Grandma is well again, right?”

“Yes…” he agreed, a little too softly, not meeting her eyes. “That’s right…”

“Right then.” The matron—Mrs. Cole, Lucy read off the placard outside her office with another pang of déjà vu—gestured towards the main hall. “I’ll just show you out, Mr. Black. And then we’ll get you sorted, dear.” She aimed another one of those strained smiles at Lucy, and she heard the woman murmur as an addendum under her breath, “I’m sure we’ll find room somewhere…”

“She’ll be alright here?” her uncle asked for reassurance as Mrs. Cole led him away, sending a nervous glance back at Lucy, who was beginning to feel more and more abandoned by the moment. “Do I need to…drop off anything? Food? Clothes? Her favorite books?”

“That won’t be necessary,” she heard Mrs. Cole’s clipped voice echoing and trailing off back down the hall as they turned the corner, and Lucy got her last glimpse of her uncle’s worn coattails disappearing around it. “Though charity is always accepted and appreciated here at Wool’s…”

Lucy stood there in the hallway.

Alone.

Her chest felt hot and tight, almost as if she were about to cry.

But Lucy’s large, sleepy eyes remained dry as ever.

Uncertainty washed over her like a malignant wave and, more than ever, she just wanted to go _home_ and hide under her covers. It hadn’t really mattered when it was just her and her grandma—the old woman just seemed to _understand_ , and Lucy was afforded a good deal of independence—but the reality that she was just _ten years old_ was sinking in and it left behind a feeling of infuriating helplessness. She wasn’t used to having to rely on others and being looked after; _Lucy_ was usually the one doing the looking after. And though she knew she was just going to have to bear with it until her grandma got better—and she _would_ get better—it still made her feel _insane_ to be uprooted and subject to this situation at all.

She hated it, and she was _livid_.

The anxious feeling wouldn’t go away either, and she learned why when, feeling another’s eyes boring into her, she looked up. And there, on the upper landing—leaning against the railing, studying her with cool, indifferent features—Lucy spotted a boy. He looked to be around her age, with hair just as dark and skin just as fair. His features were rather idealic in a generic stock photo sort of way, unlike Lucy’s, who hadn’t quite grown into her prominent, too-large-for-her-face eyes or her strong jaw just yet. The boy’s presence was startling, and Lucy wondered just how long he’d been standing there, watching her…

A little awkwardly, she raised her hand in a slow, uncertain wave, and greeted, “Hello…”

The boy made no move to reciprocate, merely giving her another long, assessing look before pushing away from the railing and stalking off without a word.

Lucy frowned and thought, ‘ _Well, that was just_ weird _…_ ’

She was generally unsure of children in her age group to begin with, but Lucy was fairly certain they didn’t act like _that_. Not the well-adjusted ones anyway… Of course, there’d always be oddballs here and there; Lucy herself was a testament to that fact all on her own. But something about the boy gave her a terribly ominous feeling—the same feeling that had been hanging over the orphanage, and her head, like a miasmic cloud ever since she’d set eyes on it, only worse now. Now, her mind was heading back to places she rarely allowed it to wander…to memories shrouded in shadows and uncertainty. Did they even exist at all? Or were they simply the made-up imaginings of an extremely unique and gifted child? No…they were far too detailed for that.

One does not simply fabricate an entire _lifetime_ of memories.

Grandma understood that.

She always did.

Lucy’s heart ached at the thought of her.

Outside, she heard the distant rumbling of thunder heralding the coming of what promised to be a truly impressive storm. She laughed a little to herself, thinking she hadn’t seen her unfortunate uncle carrying an umbrella. That poor man _truly_ had the worst luck she’d ever had the misfortune to witness in another human being. It was almost supernatural, she noted to herself, and couldn’t quite find it in her to blame him for leaving her. He was young, and had a difficult enough life, after all, from what she understood. Not to mention he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a ten-year-old girl—which rankled, once again; Lucy didn’t _want_ to be taken care of… And yet…

‘ _He’ll be back,_ ’ she thought, nodding to herself reassuringly. ‘ _He said so._ ’

‘ _He said he’d_ try…’ reminded her more critical voice, tinged with the cobwebs of her shadow-memories.

“He’ll be back,” she repeated aloud, habitually blocking out the sound of that voice.

Mrs. Cole returned with yet another of her strained smiles, low heels clicking brusquely upon the black and white tile floor. She simply appeared relieved not to have returned to a child screaming and crying about their abandonment—for which Lucy had put in a good effort, but still hadn’t been able to summon any tears yet. Perhaps they’d come later, when she shook off the numb shock of it all. She suddenly remembered a time her mother had brought her to school for the first time—only, she looked nothing like the mother in grandma’s photos. It seemed as if she’d turned her back for one moment, occupied with something the other children were doing, and then her mother was _gone_. She’d never forget the raw, visceral feeling of pure panic that had overwhelmed her when she learned she’d been left behind. There’d been plenty of screaming and crying back then.

But then Lucy remembered that she’d never been to school with other children.

Grandma taught her from home.

…

Sometimes it was hard to tell one set of childhood memories from another.

“Come along then, dear,” Mrs. Cole said gently, as if any harshness in her voice might set Lucy off. As if anticipating some sort of meltdown, the woman ushered her along quickly, much like she was getting ready to plant a bomb and then run away with fingers buried in her ears, frantically escaping the blast.

Lucy was left to hurry after her, dragging her bulky trunk awkwardly behind. It slammed into each step on the way up, making an awful amount of noise. Consequently, there were more than a few curious faces peeking out of various doorways as they passed. No one smiled, Lucy noted, and she began to wonder if it was banned at Wool’s… Mrs. Cole opened door after door, muttering to herself after she found each room occupied to capacity.

“No…no… Not here either…” the woman murmured distractedly, mentioning, “Some of the older girls are on their way out, but Emmaline won’t turn eighteen for a few months, and Helga still hasn’t found work yet…”

As she became more and more flustered, Lucy was just about to offer to stay in the belfry with the bats. She wouldn’t mind, really. It was warm for a London summer, and she actually liked bats. She liked all sorts of animals, actually, and would’ve loved to have a pet, but her grandma had weak lungs, and was allergic to anything with fur or feathers, which didn’t leave a very large selection…

“Oh, but…” Mrs. Cole paused in her muttering, thinking hard about something. “But no, no… Couldn’t possibly… Although, I suppose it would be innocent enough…perhaps…just for now…” She glanced at Lucy with a sigh and a shake of her head, then she turned on her heel. “Not to worry. Come, come, we’ll find a place for you yet…”

Lucy saw they were now headed for what was clearly the boys’ dormitories.

“It’s temporary,” the woman claimed in a wavery voice, and Lucy wasn’t certain who she was trying to reassure most with that statement. She merely noted that things must be _really_ overcrowded if the matron felt she had to resort to this.

But Mrs. Cole started to mutter to herself nervously once again when, as before, each room she checked looked to be full. This went on until they stood before a door at the very end of the hall, and Mrs. Cole’s muttering sputtered into an eerie silence. She appeared to be having an internal battle with herself, folding and unfolding her hands in anxious motions as she eyed the door, as if afraid to knock. Her eyes darted to Lucy almost apologetically, looking to gather up her strength as she finally came to a decision, and she abruptly flagged down an older boy passing through the hall.

“Barnaby, I need you to bring up a bed and a set of linen from storage, please…” She eyed Lucy’s lace-collared dress, and added, “And a uniform as well, if you would.”

The brown-haired boy eyed Lucy curiously, shooting a rather alarmed look at the closed door that set off red flags in Lucy’s mind, but he nodded his head in respect to the matron and hurried off before she could say anything. Feeling a bit lost, Lucy looked to the woman with a frown.

“Mrs. Cole…?” she asked, unsure how to phrase what she wanted to know.

“Just a moment, dear.” She gave Lucy another tight smile, explaining, “Tom can be a bit, er…funny—” She paused then, as if ‘funny’ was nowhere _near_ the word she’d been looking for, and rephrased, “— _odd_. When it comes to…meeting new friends.” Another awkward beat went by, and she said, “I’ll just let him know of the new arrangement, then…”

She knocked on the door and stepped inside, shutting it again behind her before Lucy could catch a glimpse of the occupant. Their voices were muffled, but she could hear a clear objection from one, and an impatient response from the other. It went on like this for a while, and Lucy sighed dejectedly, setting her trunk down again and sitting upon it like she’d done outside of Mrs. Cole’s office. Thoughts of home accosted her once more, and she even thought her eyes might have gotten a little moist. Still no tears yet though.

Eventually, the boy, Barnaby, returned, hauling a light, metal bedframe under one arm and a thin, springless mattress under the other.

“Mrs. Cole still in there?” he asked her curtly.

Lucy nodded.

There was a slight sneer upon the boy’s lips but he merely shrugged and set the frame down, with the mattress and linens haphazardly. Next, he tossed her what she thought was a gray sack at first, but it turned out to be a shapeless button-up dress with a white collar and undershirt. She assumed this was to be her new uniform then and sighed again.

“You’ll wanna be careful ’round him.”

Lucy looked up from the sad looking dress and eyed the boy carefully.

“Sorry…who?”

“ _Him_.” He pointed sharply at the room Mrs. Cole had gone into. “He’s mad, that one. A freak, really.”

Lucy frowned.

She’d heard kids in her neighborhood call her grandma ‘ _mad_ ’ before. Sometimes they came and threw rocks at their windows, which always made Lucy furious. Once they’d even broken the glass, at which point she had charged out of the house despite her grandma’s protests and proceeded to return fire. The word ‘ _freak’_ was tossed around liberally after that, and Lucy wasn’t allowed to play with the other children in the neighborhood anymore…

Frowning even deeper, Lucy pointed out, “That’s _not_ a very nice thing to say…”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he replied with a careless shrug and walked off. “Supper is at five.” With a bit of a nasty smirk over his shoulder, he left her with, “If you even last that long… The last one to bunk with him was sent to the hospital.”

This was far from reassuring, and clearly said for that sole purpose. On top of everything else, it only served to make her day that much worse. Lucy’s frown turned into a scowl as she eyed the unkind boy’s back, reminded of those cruel neighborhood kids. The thought of them sent a sharp burst of fury through her veins.

 _She hoped that he tripped on something_.

Funny enough, almost in perfect timing with her less than charitable thoughts, Barnaby stumbled as he rounded the corner, having stubbed his toe on it rather painfully. It was a bit petty, she knew, but she still sniggered quietly to herself as he bit out various curses, hopping on one foot.

‘ _Maybe karma_ does _exist,_ ’ she mused impishly with a much-improved mood.

It gave her the motivation to slip into the nearby lavatory and change into the sack-dress. She was just folding her much nicer one up into her trunk when Mrs. Cole finally emerged from the bedroom.

“Oh good,” she said when she observed Lucy’s new—or not-so-new—clothes. She took in the bed with a nod and smiled what looked to be her first real smile of the evening. “Everything looks tickety-boo… Let’s just move this in here, shall we? Heave-ho!”

After what Barnaby and Mrs. Cole had said about her new roommate, somehow Lucy wasn’t surprised to see the boy from the landing glowering at her from the other side of the tiny room. She found she couldn’t really blame him for the discontent. After all, she didn’t want to share a room with him either—or anyone really. What she wanted was to go _home_ …

But we don’t always get what we want, Lucy knew.

Her bed was shoved into the corner on the other side of the room, with only a blocky chair beneath the cracked window to separate it from the other. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a shabby wardrobe facing the foot of the boy’s bed, and then there was Lucy’s trunk at the foot of hers. It was all done rather quickly, and Mrs. Cole gestured at the folded mattress and linens.

“Tom, I’ll trust you can help your new friend get settled in?” she said sharply to the frowning boy.

With a cursory look at Lucy, he flatly refuted, “She’s not my friend.”

‘ _That’s okay,_ ’ Lucy thought, unoffended.

She wasn’t concerned with making friends.

“I don’t give a pin!” Mrs. Cole had clearly reached the limit of her patience for the day. “Don’t make me revoke your library privileges—you put that book down right now, young man, and help her! I expect you to show her how things work around here, get her acclimated for the next couple of days—and just—” her exasperation was palpable when, nearly pleading, she implored him, “—be _nice_. For once?” Before he could say anything in his defense, she turned on her heel and swept out of the room, but before shutting the door, she jabbed her finger at him and said, “I mean it!”

Tom looked almost shocked by this outburst—perhaps Mrs. Cole was usually a pushover, Lucy speculated—and scowled at the door when she shut it firmly behind her. He then turned that scowl on her, and Lucy was instantly uncomfortable. He slapped his book down on the chair, irritation clear in his movements as he went to help her with the bed.

Not wanting to impose or start a conflict, Lucy quickly waved him off.

“Don’t get up on my account. I’m not an invalid. I can do it myself.”

With an aggravated shrug, he returned to his own bed, propping his long legs up and cracking the book back open. The title read _Tales of Twilight and the Unseen_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lucy honestly couldn’t blame him for being aggravated. She hated it when she was interrupted from a good book too. And with that, she went about getting her bed sorted in silence, trying to ignore the dirty looks he sent her over the top of his book. The very fact that she was breathing seemed to annoy him, but once again, Lucy was not concerned with making friends.

Once she had everything sorted out, she went over and popped open her trunk, digging through it until she emerged with her latest knitting project. Though her books had been left behind at her uncle’s behest, she had managed to sneak in several balls of yarn and her needles. If not particularly interesting like a good book, it was soothing, and would at least kill time. The constant patterns of knits, pearls and stitch counting also kept her thoughts from drifting, or troublesome memories from interfering… It helped her to ignore the dirty looks as well.

For a while, there was just the merciful quiet, with only the sound of a page turning every now and then, and the soft clickity-clack of Lucy’s needles to occupy it. With the rain pounding on the window outside and the encroaching thunder that came along with it, contrasting with the near silence in the room, it was almost nice. If Lucy concentrated on the familiar motions of her hands and the soft yarn twined through her fingers, she could almost pretend that she was at home. There was only one thing missing, and at that thought she set her knitting down to get one last thing out of her trunk.

Folded into the very bottom was a thick quilt. It was an intricate tapestry of squares in muted tones of purples and blues on one side, with patterns of stars and moons that shimmered and shined; they almost appeared to _move_ if one looked at them in a certain light. On the other side, it was lined with wonderfully soft fleece, which she wrapped around herself like a shawl before heading back to the lumpy bed and crossing her legs beneath her. She felt better now that the ever-present chill in the building was no longer biting into her. The quilt still held that cinnamon apple tart scent of _home_ , and it was as if the fleece had sucked up some of the warmth that came from the oven and was pumping it into her skin—like magic.

She almost got the urge to sigh and lie down to sleep the rest of the day away but didn’t think she could manage to let her guard down that much with a stranger in the room. She wondered if he felt the same way, and if that was why he seemed so unhappy with the new arrangement. It would make sense, she reflected as she picked up her knitting again, easing her hands back into the practiced motions and click-clacking away. It was quiet in the room still, though the thunderstorm outside was starting to pick up. She was just wondering if Uncle had managed to find a nice awning somewhere to duck under when the silence was finally broken.

And not by her, surprisingly enough.

“What are you making?”

It came out more as a demand than a question.

Lucy looked across at her neighbor curiously, then down at her creation, and held it up for his perusal.

“It’s a sock,” she explained simply.

Tom blinked at it as if he’d never beheld a sock in his life.

“It has _stripes_ …” he pointed out the multi-colored purple and green streaks as if they were the most fascinating thing he’d seen all day. Who knows? In this place that appeared to lack all color, it just might be.

“Yes,” she agreed, for lack of anything better to add to his astute observation.

There was a beat of silence and he asked, “Did you make that as well?” He gestured to the quilt wrapped around her.

Lucy shook her head.

“My grandma did.” She hesitated a little before adding, “She’s a lot better at this sort of thing than I am…”

Another beat, and he wanted to know, “What’s wrong with her?”

Lucy frowned at him, wondering just how long he’d been eavesdropping on the stairs earlier.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “She’s just a little sick, that’s all. She’ll be better soon, and then I’ll be out of your hair. Don’t worry.”

Tom eyed her as if she were dull witted and shook his head.

“They were lying to you.”

She furrowed her brow at him.

“What are you on about?”

“I can always tell when someone is lying. Little trick of mine,” he answered, looking to lose interest in the conversation, returning to paging through his book. His eyes flicked over at her one last time though, and he stated in no uncertain terms, “ _No-one_ is coming back for you.”

Frowning deeper with a dawning sense of hopelessness, Lucy whispered, “Don’t say that.”

“What?” he huffed bitterly. “The truth?”

Consternation gathering, she pointed out, “You’re saying it to try and hurt me… And I don’t know why.”

He scoffed at her and shook his head.

“If I really wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have to _try_ …and you’d be screaming,” he said in an ominously pleasant voice. A warning if she’d ever heard one. He reminded her a little of a rattlesnake, all coiled up and shaking his tail at her. _Tread carefully_ , it said.

“…You’re not a very nice boy, are you?” she quietly deduced, continuing, even as he narrowed his eyes at her, “You seem very unhappy.” Softly, she added, “I’m sorry… I don’t like being here anymore than you do.”

“You don’t know anything,” he hissed, his eyes flashing. “You’re just a spoiled little rich girl.”

“Hah!” She couldn’t help but laugh aloud at that statement. “You’re very mistaken. Me? I’m poor as a church mouse. It’s the rest of my family that’s rich. And they want nothing to do with me.”

Eying her fully now with his book on his lap, he wondered, “Why? What’s wrong with you?”

She shrugged, giving him a flat look. “Clearly, I’m spoiled, and I don’t know anything, according to you…”

“ _Tell me_ ,” he insisted, and Lucy was beginning to suspect she wasn’t the only spoiled person in this room.

“I don’t _know_ , alright?” She threw her knitting down in front of her irately. “The only thing I _do_ know is that it started with my great grandma. She was disowned for marrying the wrong person. A curse on her, and all her descendants, blah, blah, blah…”

“What kind of curse?”

“The curse of Black Luck, apparently. It got my grandparents, and my mum, _and_ my dad…” Lucy muttered. “Uncle Marius got the full blast of it, I think—poor sod…”

“That man who lied to you?” Tom asked, frowning.

“He didn’t _lie_ ,” Lucy snarled. “He’ll be back—you’ll see.”

“It’ll hurt less if you just accept it.” Tom shook his head at her, returning to his book. “No-one is coming back for you. You’re stuck here. Like me.”

“You expect me to believe you want to _spare_ me pain?” Lucy scoffed, eying him accusingly. “Forgive me if I have some difficulty with that, as you seem so delighted in _causing_ it.”

“You’re safe, as long as you don’t annoy me,” he told her, carelessly turning another page.

“Oh, yes, my Lord,” she muttered sarcastically, seizing her knitting again in hopes of calming herself, “thank you, my Lord, I am but an insect beneath your shoe, my Lord…”

It was then she caught his lips curling into a smile for the first time that evening.

He might not have been mad, Lucy assessed quietly, but she suspected there were certainly a few screws loose somewhere…

**TBC...**


	2. Lies and Needles

Lucinda Hitchens had a seizure in the mess hall the next morning.

Not an entirely unprecedented event at Wool's Orphanage.

But for once, Tom had nothing to do with it.

He usually didn't have a problem with his fearful reputation—often, he enjoyed the power it afforded him over the others—but in this instance it was…inconvenient.

"I swear on my  _life_ , I didn't do anything to her."

That fool harridan, Mrs. Cole, had no idea what this admission meant to him, of course. It was a curious feeling to actually be telling the truth, he noted, not without a sense of irony. Not unlike how slipping on someone else's skin would feel, he imagined. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he had nothing to hide, and the sensation was… _unnatural_. Unpleasant, even. Like stumbling at the top of the stairs, having imagined the extra step.

He didn't  _know_  what was wrong with the stupid girl.

Moreover, he didn't feel in control, and that was… _irritating_.

At the woman's persistently distrustful perusal, Tom insisted, "Ask anyone—they all saw it—I didn't lay a  _finger_  on her!" He gestured impatiently to the girl on the bed, who'd proven to be even more troublesome than he'd initially expected. "Ask  _her_ , even."

But oddly enough, though she seemed chatty and fond of talking Tom's ear off, Lucinda hadn't spoken a word since the incident. She merely stared down at her hands in her lap, and very deliberately, Tom observed, she did not look at  _him_. For a wild moment, a volley of pure rage shot through him as he wondered if she wasn't doing this on purpose to implicate him. To anyone looking, which included that spiteful hag, Cole, it would appear for all intents and purposes that he had  _traumatized_  the girl. But no, he reasoned, thinking of Sherlock Holmes as he scrambled for any kind of cause, or motive.

She had none.

He truly hadn't done anything to her!

And therein lay the crux of this perplexing puzzle…

The old bag gave him another suspicious glance but decided to follow his directive nonetheless. Approaching the girl as one might approach a wounded animal, Mrs. Cole perched herself on the stretch of bed in front of her and gently took her hands to get her attention. Slowly the girl looked up with glazed eyes that struggled to focus, as if she was having trouble really seeing either of them.

"Lucinda, dear," she said in her most cautious tone, reserved for squalling children, "can you tell me what happened?"

Tom glared at the girl's head, fervently willing her not to say anything that might implicate him further in this mess. He could've drawn on his 'little tricks,' but he very much doubted that would help his situation…

In that moment, Lucinda's eyes regained some clarity and darted to his side of the room with what was clearly the same sort of dread the other orphans reserved just for him. And while Tom would have normally found this pleasing, he knew for a  _fact_  he'd done nothing to deserve it yet. He'd taken the hag's threat to revoke his library privileges seriously, and had been on what, for Tom, constituted as his best behavior. And why not? The girl had nothing he wanted that he needed to threaten her for, and she hadn't annoyed him overly too much. He'd even found her a little amusing as she followed him around, listening as he ordered her about, doing the bulk of the chores assigned to them without complaint. He'd begun to suspect she'd taken a bit of a grudging liking to him as well, though he'd gone to no effort to be especially charming, which was a pleasant surprise; he was sure he could use that somehow.

So why the sudden change?

Had some of the others said something to influence her opinion of him?

No, no, she'd been stuck to his side like a particularly sticky glob of glue since the previous evening. Not fond of socializing, that one, he learned—which worked out just fine for Tom, as he'd earned a little helper out of it. That left him with more reading time, and a possible accomplice in any revenge pranks, or, more likely, a scapegoat if necessary. But that was all dashed now. She was more trouble than anything else at this point… And he still didn't know how she'd come to be afraid of him!

It was going to bug him until he figured it out, he just knew it.

"I…" she trembled out in a choked voice, not meeting any of their eyes. "…The doctors called it Epilepsy. We thought it had gone…years ago…"

 _She was lying_.

He knew it in his bones.

It didn't matter that the lie got him off the hook—Mrs. Cole was clearly eating up everything the girl told her—now he wanted to know  _why_.

There were just too many odd questions without answers for his liking this morning. The more he learned about his unwanted roommate, the more questions seemed to pop up, and he was starting to  _hate_  that trend.

For instance, she was now lying through her teeth (about this so-called 'Epilepsy') almost as well as he could. He hadn't known she had that particular talent, having come off as rather candid with him. And what's worse, she knew how to press the cute-and-innocent-little-girl factor to her advantage almost expertly. Tom had his good looks and silver tongue, of course, but girls had a natural ability to manipulate that would always escape him simply due to his being born a male. If a girl acted helpless and pathetic enough, there'd always be a man stupid enough to come to her rescue, where if a man acted as such, he'd merely get laughed at. That she appeared to be perfectly aware of this double standard, and highly knowledgeable about where to apply it for her best advantage,  _irked_  him to no end.

But more importantly was the question of  _why_  she was lying in the first place.

Tom had almost gotten in trouble because of her, and he still hadn't forgiven her for that. And so when the old bitty finally left with a promise to call on Lucinda's cousin, Tom figured he was more than deserving of a proper explanation. But when the silence in the room had gone sour, and she still would not look him in the eye, he saw that  _he_  was going to have to be the one to take the initiative.

"Why did you lie?" he asked frankly, taking care to sound grown-up and authoritative. He found this combination often yielded better results more often than naught. If it didn't, he could always resort to intimidation tactics.

Unfortunately, his approach only afforded him a mixed sort of reaction. A dumbfounded look was better than no reaction, though, he reckoned.

"I told you about my little trick," he reminded her. "I can always tell. You can't hide anything from me, so don't even think about trying it." He added a properly menacing, " _Or else_ ," at the end, just to up the ante a bit and see how it panned out.

She scrutinized him, looking him up and down as if seeing him for the first time. The fear and bewilderment were still there, which may or may not have been helping him at this point, but it seemed more muted with something that resembled…was that fascination? He then glimpsed the most incredulous spark of amusement.

"I am a four-hundred-foot-tall purple platypus-bear with pink horns and silver wings," she confessed to him flatly.

And after a moment of silence in which he could only stare at her, at a loss for words for what may have been the first time in his life, she burst out spontaneously into hysterical fit of laughter. It was then that he saw her cry for the first time. He couldn't tell if it was because she was laughing so hard, or if she was genuinely upset. But it was the latter, then why was she laughing? There were so many emotions on her face that even Tom couldn't pull them all apart.

This was precisely why he  _hated_  girls…

"Have you gone mad?" he wondered, aghast at her perplexing behavior.

She shrugged flippantly, throwing her hands up in an irate gesture that belayed her true upset though she giggled out, "I think I must have. I'm sitting here, in an orphanage, talking to Voldemort—can't get any madder than that." She snorted and added, "Not unless I was wearing a high hat, of course. It's common knowledge that any proper mad person  _must_  own a high hat."

She burst into giggles again.

He scrunched his brow at her, trying to sift through the insane babble for anything substantial, but all he could arrive at was, "…Voldemort? That sounds like a disease. Is that what's wrong with you? Is that why you went ballistic at breakfast?"

For some reason, it only made her laugh harder.

"Yes, actually, you could say that is  _exactly_  what's wrong!" She grinned widely at him through her hysteria, though it was more a bearing of her teeth than anything else. "Well done, Tom—truly good show. You're  _so_  clever! Has anyone ever told you that?"

He knew he was clever—he didn't  _need_  anyone to tell him that. Especially not a half-mad giggling idiot who wouldn't give him a straight answer!

He was beginning to get seriously irritated. Enough so that he even began to feel tingling at his fingertips of whatever it was that made odd things happen around him. He was hardly even aware of his own actions as he stood from the chair and strode towards the girl, barely even registered raising his hand, and then—

_Slap!_

The laughter ceased immediately.

Tom wasn't sorry in the least bit.

When she looked up from where her head had jerked to the side with the force behind the strike, he could see the fear in her eyes again, and he was relieved. The fear was something familiar. Fear, he could deal with. The laughter, and hysteria? That was almost enough to make  _him_  afraid, and he didn't like the feeling at all. He contemplated weather or not Lucinda could  _truly_  be a madwoman, and decided that if she wasn't, then she was almost as good an actor as he was.

"That  _really_  hurt," she groused at him, a flash of anger muting the fear in her face as she rubbed her reddening cheek.

" _Good_ ," he answered, satisfied that he was in the right. "Maybe it will help you think clearer, and you might provide me with a proper explanation for this—" He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the entire situation "—maudlin  _travesty_. I don't normally abide by girlish melodrama. Do try to keep it to yourself and stop  _wasting my time_."

Looking incensed, her nostrils flaring in indignant rage, she grated out, "There are so many things I could say to that, but words just don't seem good enough for you, Tom Riddle…"

He'd made her angry. Excellent. Perhaps she'd let something slip.

"Normally," Tom drawled out in disdain, "I'd be thrilled to hear you say that, but you see, you still haven't answered my questions."

Growing bolder in her anger, she snapped, "Why should I!? It's none of your business, you nosy parker! I'll tell you where you can shove your sodding questions—"

No, no, this was getting him nowhere…

Tom took a menacing step towards her, an act to intimidate, and warned, "I would reconsider that statement if I were you…"

"Or  _what_?" she seethed. And then she laughed— _laughed_ —mocking him, before reaching dismissively for her needles. With an indolent lowering of her heavy eyelids, she said, "Go away, Tom Riddle. I'm not afraid of you."

Who  _was_  this girl?

More importantly, who did she  _think_  she was?

An uncontrolled electric current crackled over his skin with how infuriated she made him. It was the first time in a very long time he'd been out of control of  _anything_ , and he  _hated it_. He hated it, he hated it, he hated it—

He wanted to hurt her, he realized. He wanted to  _shake_  her. He wanted to see her bleed, and cry—with no laughing involved in the slightest. He wanted to make her scream. More than that, he wanted to take the things she loved and rip them apart.  _Not afraid_ —

"You might live to regret that," he grated out, a malicious sort of glee curling his lips as his hand darted out, quick as a striking serpent, to snatch at her ridiculous stripey creation.

All it took was a quick tug for it to slip right off the needles and come unraveled, he noted with some fascination; he'd always enjoyed taking things apart.

" _Nooo_! No-no-no—you—you're ruining  _everything_!" Lucinda cried out in abject dismay as she fumbled across the bed for her work, grasping for it with panicked, clumsy hands. But Tom had the string twined between his long fingers, and with joy in his heart he  _pulled_ …

He found the way the yarn—crinkled, tangled, and all but unworkable now that it had come undone—so closely resembled the texture of her kinky locks was bizarrely fascinating. It was as if she'd put a piece of herself into her work, and he, Tom, had been the one to defile it. The thought made him unprecedently pleased with himself, as he'd watched her work on the project long into the night, and just imagining how many hours she'd put into it stirred something in him that felt almost giddy. And the ridiculous, heartbroken look on her face was the final, finishing touch. Perfect, he remembered thinking.

He wondered if she'd cry.

"I—you—" she stammered, for the first time, at a loss for words.

Still no tears, he noted with some disappointment, but he found himself rather fascinated as he watched her cheeks turn a vivid shade of red…

"…You evil  _bastard!_ " she exclaimed. "I'll kill you!"

Of all the things Tom had expected to hear come out of that girl's mouth, it had not been  _that_.

Not even Mrs. Cole was so vulgar, and she was chained to the bottle.

"Don't be absurd—" he began.

But then he felt something hurtle past either side of his face, and a sharp burning that erupted in his cheek astonished him.

A moment later, he slowly turned his head to see Lucinda's needles—all five of them—buried deeply into the door behind him. When he turned back, it was to see the girl staring at him with eyes as large and wide as saucers, anger fleeing from her face as quickly as the color drained out of it.

It was then that a knock on the door made both of them jump, and Mrs. Cole promptly poked her head in.

"Lucinda, your—" Abruptly, when her eyes fell on Tom, her speech sputtered to a stop and her face took on a similar shade of white as the girl's. "Good gracious, Tom dear—" And when she opened the door fully, taking in its new adornments she sputtered out. "…What in the  _world_  happened in here?!"

A strange feeling began to make Tom feel woozy, and he felt something hot and sticky sluggishly dripping down the side of his face. Upon touching his fingers to it, he looked down to find them coated in crimson. At the change in the tilt of his head, more of the stuff trickled onto the floor at a startling measure, quickly forming a small pool at his feet. Time seemed to become distorted somehow, and he could almost hear the ticking of the clock pounding in his ears in unison with his pulse. The whole world tilted at an odd angle…and then the ground was rushing up to meet him.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was that girl's face.

And even then, unpleasant as it was, he found he was satisfied because of what he saw gleaming upon it.

Tears.

' _Finally_ ,' he thought as his eyes grew heavy, peculiarly content with the state of the world.

**TBC...**


	3. A Boy Named Sue

Lucy went about her days in a state of almost perpetual guilt.

She felt it every time she laid eyes on Tom Riddle's face, which was uncomfortably difficult to avoid, seeing as she still hadn't been moved to another room yet. Despite being given the dittany her Uncle always seemed to have on him—something about always being prepared for life threatening situations—Tom would have that scar on his cheek for the rest of his life.

And it was all Lucy's fault.

_"Magical scarring,_ " said Uncle Marius, his face grave as ever, " _isn't the same as a normal scar. They can be stubborn like that, sometimes… Especially when it comes to dark spells._ " He'd then urged her, " _You need to be_ careful _, Lucy. You're better than this. You're_ smarter _than this._ "

Apparently not smart enough to know she was a witch.

Not until she'd nearly impaled the once and future Dark Lord on her knitting needles, that is.

_Why_  did she feel guilty about this?

Because she  _was_.

She wasn't going to analyze it; self-analysis often led to stumbling over nasty realizations about oneself. She wasn't going to go poking around in  _that_  can of worms—no—not even with an overly-long bargepole.

That way led to madness—if she hadn't already arrived, that is…

It had been a long time since she'd had one of her fits.

And though she was loath to admit it…Tom was right—it  _wasn't_  Epilepsy.

She'd only told Mrs. Cole that, because it was what the doctors had said. And maybe they were right. Maybe, hooked up to all their machines that scribbled out brainwaves and electrical activity, she qualified as a classic Epileptic. Well, maybe not a classic case; a true Epileptic had many more fits than Lucy did, after all. What made her different from the classics was something she was relatively sure no one else had discovered…

Lucy had her first, and worst, episode when she was three years old.

This by itself wasn't necessarily unusual…but the shocking events that took place in the aftermath certainly were.

After that first seizure, Lucy was a completely different person.

She didn't 'blackout' during her fits. No, when Lucy's seizures happened, what was taking place in her brain was not just simply abnormal electrical impulses…but a pathologically overwhelming rush of thought and  _memory_  not her own. Over a series of several months, Lucy had a total of twenty seizures, and each one appeared to change her personality more and more profoundly until there was hardly anything left of the child she'd once been… Towards the end of month twenty-four of the harrowing experience, the frequency dropped until, finally, when she was five, they seemed to have gone.

But the damage had already been done.

Most of the time, Lucy could no longer tell the difference between  _her_  memories, and the shadowy ones left over from her episodes. And the more episodes she had, the more these 'shadow-memories' converged to form a more and more complete 'shadow-self.' They were separate, and yet… _not_ —her, and  _not_  her. The memories had a voice, and the voice was  _hers_. Yet it was impossible to explain how she could just  _know_  these things—things no five-year-old little girl had any business knowing, like the fact that a war that would span the whole world over was coming sooner than anyone might think—but she did. She knew these things in the same way that, now, at ten-years-old, she knew that  _magic was somehow real_ , she was now living in an absurdly popular children's story, and that her grumpy, infuriating roommate would one day become a  _mass-murderer_.

And the worst part of all?

She didn't know  _why_.

How did Tom Riddle expect her to explain any of this in any coherent fashion?

Better yet, what gave him the right?

By all accounts, if by some stretch she did  _not_  happen to be mad, and her newest batch of memories was to be believed, he deserved every ounce of contempt she could muster for him. He  _deserved_  to have his stupid, perfect face marred a little. The little monster  _deserved_  to have needles flung at him for badgering her—not to mention ruining her good work! But then again…remembering Marius' admonishments for caution, she couldn't help but feel a little sick to her stomach.

She'd used  _dark magic_.

_"You're better than this_ …" he had said, with disappointment in his eyes.

Uncle Marius, Lucy understood now, was a 'squib'—essentially a non-magical person born to magical parents—which was the opposite of what she was. And he was a squib who could barely afford to make ends meet, if she paid attention to what he didn't say. Marius was deeply shameful of his situation and refused to speak about it directly. Lucy felt sad when she thought about her situation on top of it, just making things worse for him. She understood why he couldn't take her in; she did. But that didn't explain how she had been kept ignorant and in the dark all these years.

" _Your grandmother wanted you kept away from the magical world,_ " Marius had explained to her gently. " _Your parents were muggles, and their parents before them—it was unlikely you'd have to be involved with magic in the first place. But more than that, she thought it might make your, 'condition'…worse._ " With a careworn smile, he'd added, " _Seems a bit like flogging a dead horse at this point though, doesn't it?_ "

And though Marius was poorer than he was proud to admit, he'd left her with a bag of silver coins her memories had prompted her to identify as 'sickles' and his address in a place called Diagon Alley. " _Just in case of an emergency…_ " he'd said, looking worried for her and muttering about Black Luck. She wanted to talk to him more about that, but he'd gotten a bit skittish at her questions and was off again, with a tip of his shabby hat, sooner than she would've liked.

Once more, Lucy felt cast adrift in a sea of confusion, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever manage to keep her head above water.

The hazy memories she'd received during her episode were vague and hazy, but powerful. They kept her up at night, especially knowing a future Dark Lord was sleeping on the other side of the room… A future Dark Lord who hadn't spoken to her since their row, and she kept catching him giving her the most inscrutable looks out of the corner of her eye. It made her more than a little nervous, and she kept waiting for the moment when he'd get back at her in some dark shady alcove where no-one would hear her scream… And though this potentiality scared her breathless, and actually gave her nightmares once or twice, whenever her eyes fell on that scar she'd given him, her guilt weighed down heavier than her fear, or even her anger.

If he  _did_  end up trying to smother her in her sleep, grimly, Lucy thought she might actually deserve it.

She could've  _killed_  him.

She kept trying to come up with ways to make amends. But aside from doing  _all_  his chores, rather than just most of them as she'd been doing— _egads_ , when had she turned into such a doormat?—she wasn't sure what else to do. She'd even gathered up her courage and tried apologizing to his face, but he hadn't even sneered at her, just gotten up and left. It was causing her no end of anxiety, and if he was planning on punishing her in some way, she wished he'd just get it over with… But no, he seemed content to let her stew in it. But Lucy knew that a pot left to boil for too long would soon blow its top, and knowing herself as well as she did, she knew her temper was just the same.

She didn't want to cause another accident…

It was with that thought in mind that she gathered up the dregs of her courage, not to mention her dignity, to take the seat across from him in the mess hall.

"We need to talk," she began directly, working hard to keep the wavering out of her voice.

"I hardly see how that's necessary," he answered without looking up at her. He was reading under the table again, not touching his food, Lucy noticed.

Not a good start, but at least he was talking to her. She could work with that.

"It  _is_  necessary," she insisted, her voice a quiet but forceful hiss as she pointed out, "I know you're like me."

That got her an unimpressed glare as he looked up from his book, his scar still pink and noticeable.

"I am  _nothing_  like you."

Guilt assaulted her once again, and Lucy ducked her head, wanting to hide her face from shame. It didn't matter what she thought she knew about him, or the irony of his disapproval of her use of dark magic. It didn't even matter that he was a hypocrite. She'd still  _hurt_  him, and it troubled her deeply.

"I'm  _sorry_ ," she whispered for what felt like the tenth time, trying to convey all the genuine feelings welling up in her chest. She even felt tears prick at her eyes. "I've been trying to control it on my own, so I don't hurt anyone else, but it's…stubborn."

"Somehow," Tom said, eyeing her dryly, "that doesn't surprise me…" Unmoved, he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms as he regarded her coldly. "Let me guess—you want me to teach you."

Wildly, Lucy shook her head, taken aback at the suggestion.

"No-no, I…I wouldn't feel right asking…" Her mouth bent into a disgruntled frown. "Not after…"

"Good," Tom remarked sharply, "because I wouldn't have done it."

His scathing dismissal normally would have her rankled, but as things stood, Lucy merely nodded in acceptance unable to meet his eyes. He was frowning at her from across the table with a contemplative expression, perhaps expecting her to start up an argument, as per her habit. But Lucy only picked at her food unhappily, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to sink into the floor and disappear.

"Uncle said we should be getting our Hogwarts letters soon…" Lucy muttered to her lap. "Term starts in September, so that should help solve the problem."

The look he regarded her with became riddled with puzzlement, and he wondered, "What in the world are you on about this time? Hogwarts?"

Lucy looked up sharply, and gasped, "Oh, gods—I forgot you didn't know—" She ground a knuckle into her temple in frustration at herself " _—of course_  you don't know; how could you? You've been stuck here all your life, right?"

Suddenly, like a lightbulb coming in her head, Lucy knew  _exactly_  what she needed to do to make things right.

Not waiting for his scathing, probably defensive response, she leaned forward eagerly, and asked, "Hey, do you know where Charing Cross Road is?"

Looking at her suspiciously, he answered, "…Vaguely. Why?"

"I have a terrible sense of direction—couldn't find my way out of a paper bag," Lucy admitted, "but if you can help me get there, I know this place—" she trailed off excitably, flapping her hands, "—I've never actually been, but my uncle lives around there, and he works in this shop that's all about magical artifacts—"

"Magic?" Tom interrupted, and Lucy knew she had him, since he now looked raptly interested in what she had to say. "It's magic, then—what we can do?"

She nodded and tried out a smile.

"Do you want to come with me?" She asked. "I'll explain more when we get there. Easier that way."

Tom aimed a glare at the high table—mainly at Mrs. Cole—before his eyes darted back to her.

"We'll have to sneak out," he explained, nose crinkling unhappily. "Otherwise we'd have to take Martha, or one of the older kids with us…"

"That's why I need your help," Lucy whispered, glad he seemed to be on board. "I'm not so good at being sneaky… Seems more up your alley."

"Let's go now," he said abruptly, throwing another look at the high table, calculating this time.

" _Now_?" Lucy was thrown off guard, not expecting something so spontaneous.

"Now or never." He nodded, gesturing around at the full mess hall. "Better to disappear when everyone is distracted. Hurry up and follow me."

She didn't ask twice.

On their way out, Lucy grabbed the bag of sickles she'd hidden under her mattress and proceeded to follow Tom out the front door. She found it remarkable how easily they made it out without anyone noticing and wondered just how often he'd done this sort of thing. Knowing him, probably all the time. Lucy vaguely remembered something about skiving off from school before remembering once again that she'd been homeschooled. But in the memory, she remembered being sneaky, and how exhilarating it had felt to fool everyone, walking right out that door and skipping home to play computer games… She felt something similar to that once they hit the street. Tom grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him through the crowds of bustling populace, cutting through it expertly like a fish through water. Eventually they trotted up behind a buss just taking off from a stop where he tugged her up behind him to bum a ride on the bumper. She grinned at him for this cleverness as the wind blew their hair around wildly, and she may have imagined it, but she liked to think his lips curled at her smugly in return.

"I hope you know where you're going!" She called to him over the rush, still grinning. "Because I have no clue where we are!"

"I better not let go of you then," he answered, giving her wrist a squeeze, then pretended to think about it. "Or maybe I should…"

"Don't you  _dare_ , Tom Riddle!" Lucy objected, frightened of falling off the bumper if he did.

He laughed at her then, his grin wide and feral—almost mad.

"And what would you do if I did?"

She gave him a stormy scowl, and growled out, "I'd hunt you down, and make you sorry."

Surprisingly, this only seemed to amuse him further.

"I might be more intimidated by that if you showed any promise of backing it up."

"I could  _definitely_  make you sorry," Lucy insisted with a squinty glare.

"Maybe," he answered with no conviction. "You might have a little trouble finding me though," he pointed out with glee dancing in his eyes, clearly still laughing at her, "if you're  _already_  lost, two minutes outside the neighborhood."

Dammit, he was right.

When she was unable to come up with any better retort, Lucy merely grumbled, "You're the worst—I hope you choke on a bug…"

Smirking, he admonished, "Work on your sense of direction, Lucinda. Then maybe you can try making threats."

"It's Lucy," she told him without thinking. "Don't call me Lucinda."

He gave her a careful look and asked, "Why?"

"Because Lucinda sounds like an old lady's name." She stuck her tongue out at him.

He rolled his eyes at her and muttered almost too quietly to hear, "At least your name's not Tom…"

She did hear it though, and couldn't help but laugh, "At least your name's not  _Sue_."

She remembered a song about a boy named Sue, and at his puzzled expression, she proceeded to throw a couple of half recalled lyrics at him:

_"Some gal would giggle, and I'd get red,_  
_And some guy'd laugh, and I'd bust his head,_  
_I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue…"_

_"But I made me a vow to the moon and stars,_  
_I'd search the honky-tonks and bars,_  
_And kill that man who gave me that awful name…"_

_"And he said, "Son, this world is rough,_  
_And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough,_  
_And I know I wouldn't be there to help ya along,_

_So, I give ya that name and I said goodbye,_  
_I knew you'd have to get tough or die,_  
_And it's the name that helped to make you strong…""_

Tom seemed amused, despite himself.

"Are you insinuating my mother gave me a terribly common name to—what?— _build character_?"

Trying not to laugh, Lucy teased, "Evidently, her intentions backfired utterly…"

Giving her a dry look, he agreed in what Lucy thought was the most pleasantly fake voice he could muster, " _Utterly_."

Lucy couldn't help but laugh then.

"Well, better late than never. You can still make her proud." She grinned at him, even as he frowned at her. "There's this school for magic—remember, I was telling you about Hogwarts?"

"What kind of an idiot names a school 'Hogwarts'?" he wondered, making a face.

"Maybe it was an inside joke between the founders?" Lucy suggested with a shrug. "I don't remember—don't ask me. I'm sure there're lots of books on it where we're heading."

She watched his eyes light up with a sort of bibliophilic avarice that was slightly disturbing, but it made her laugh again.

Still smiling, she asked, "Have you forgiven me yet?"

His expression fell, slowly smoothing out and becoming something coolly guarded.

"I might think about it," was all he gave her. "Maybe. If you're telling the truth."

"I always tell the truth!" she protested with a laugh. "At least where it counts. I'm not a bad person, you know."

"Except for when you're trying to kill me," he pointed out dryly, and pulled her after him as he hopped off the bumper.

When they dodged out of traffic, circumnavigating a horse-drawn buggy, and they were safely up onto the sidewalk, he let go of her wrist and walked brusquely ahead of her. Lucy, unwilling to let the subject go, hurried to keep pace with his longer stride until she was walking beside him with some effort. He only gave her a side-eyed stare and arched an imperious brow at her efforts.

"I  _wasn't_ ," she insisted, "Trying to kill you, you know. It was an accident."

"Could've fooled me," he muttered, glaring at the intersection ahead where a newsboy tried to hawk his wears. There was something about a scandal, and a German airship going down in America if the shouting was to be believed. Tom tugged impatiently on Lucy's sleeve when she paused to listen, ordering, "Keep up. I won't go looking for you if you get lost."

"Bossy…" Lucy mumbled back, stumbling after him with a frown.

When they turned onto Charing Cross Road, Tom asked her abruptly, "What are we looking for?"

"A cauldron," was her quick answer, biting her lip as she grasped onto the memory, shading her eyes and scanning the crowded street on tiptoe. "Leaky. It's a pub, with a back entrance, next to a…record store! That's it!" She pointed and took off before Tom could grab her.

She would've been flattened by an A-model if his reflexes had been any slower.

"You're really not too bright, are you?"

"Could've happened to anyone…"

She scowled at him unflatteringly, shrugging out of the hold he had on her collar, and, this time, made sure to look both ways before hoofing it across the street.

"Are you coming?!" she hollered back at him, a feeling of excited anticipation building up in her chest. "Or are you going to stand there looking constipated?!"

At the two red spots on his cheeks and the way he stomped across the street towards her, Lucy knew she was in for it, so with that, she turned on her heel and fled into the establishment. She knew it was wrong, (and quite possibly masochistic), but she derived a certain perverse joy from antagonizing him. That had to say something negative about her as a person, but with a mental shrug, Lucy decided, ' _Worth it._ '

That was until he caught up with her right as she waltzed through the door.

They got into a little scuffle in which his tugging fingers found their way into her hair, and Lucy nearly ended up poking him in the eye. Failing at that, she  _did_  manage to stomp on his foot when he attempted to pull her off into some dark corner—to torture her in some horribly unspeakable way, away from prying eyes, no doubt—but it did little good. Masochistic indeed, Hitchens—she'd asked for it.

"Now-now, wot'sis, then?" an aggravated voice groused. "Have to break up enough bar fights these days, and now little'uns as well? Wha's the world commin' to, eh?"

Lucy immediately felt Tom release her, and almost flinched at the unfamiliar beatific voice he addressed the man with.

"Just disciplining my sister, Sir," he lied, and Lucy's eyes boggled at the horribly polite smile on his face. "We were playing a game."

" _Who's_  your sister?!" Lucy was about to balk out, but a strategically maneuvered half-hug that had his arm hooked around her lower face and mouth had it coming out more like, " _Mmmaftmmm_!"

"Discipline, issit?" the man mused, eyeing the two of them carefully and sucking air between his teeth in thought. Lucy noticed he was missing at least three of them.

At that moment, Lucy felt Tom's arm slip, and she took the chance to use her own full set of pearly whites to her advantage.

"Ouch!" He jerked away from her in surprise, cradling his forearm dramatically. "You see, Sir?" He pointed out to the barman quickly, "She's a savage beast!"

The barman threw his head back and laughed heartily.

"That she is, that she is," the jovial man chuckled, his large hand coming down to fondly ruffle Lucy's curls. "Gotta bite like a venomous tentacula, don'cha, girl? Keep that brother of yers in line, yeah?"

"Yes, Sir," she agreed, and with a smug look over at Tom she stuck her tongue out belligerently.

"You'll be wantin' back into the alley, I s'pose?" the man assumed, looking back over their shoulders curiously. "Ya got anyone else wit'cha?"

Quickly, assuming he meant an adult, Lucy plugged in, "We're going to meet our uncle—surprise him at work."

"A surprise, eh?" the barman gave them his less than perfect grin, gesturing them after him. "Who's yer uncle, then? Where's 'e work? I might know 'im. Tom's my name, by the way, Tom Barliman."

The younger Tom narrowed his eyes just slightly at the man, but Lucy still caught it.

"I can't remember the name of the place, exactly—I think it's an antique shop?" she said quickly. "Uncle Marius always shows up covered in dust. I'm sure we'll find him if we follow the trail."

The barkeep laughed again.

"Marius? Little Marius Black? Poor sop. Never been a man with worse luck, I'll wager." He ruffled Lucy's curls again, showing them out to a shabby back alley. "Could use a bit of sunshine, that one, I s'pect. Right, Sunshine?"

Lucy mustered up a sunny smile that she hoped outshined even Tom's carefully perfected one.

"Right then." The man pulled a long, thin rod out of his spotty half-apron and began tapping specific stones on an old, dirty wall. "You two have any trouble, you run straight back and ask for Tom the Barman, ya hear?"

Lucy saw Tom her Fake Brother twitch just slightly out of the corner of her eye, and when she began humming the tune to  _A Boy Named Sue_ , he turned his glare on her.

"You must think you're a real riot," he muttered bitterly as Tom the Barkeep cursed and tried out another series of bricks.

Lucy grinned at him. "I'm a ray of sunshine—haven't you heard?"

"He called you a venomous tentacula," Tom muttered back. "What  _is_  a venomous tentacula?"

"I don't know, but I'm betting it's something with sharp teeth." She grinned, curling her fingers and snapping at him.

He wrinkled his nose and leaned away from her.

"You really are a little savage."

"You like it," she accused him with a smirk.

"What on earth gave you that idea?"

"I can just tell."

A rumbling soon interrupted their bickering, and the two watched, transfixed as the alley bricks scrambled out of the way to reveal a bustling hub of commerce. It was as if someone had just peeled away the silver screen and put everything in vivid technicolor. Memories that weren't hers blasted Lucy's brain like rapid-fire, but she didn't think they did the place justice. There were people dressed in fantastical styles in all colors of the rainbow going about their mundane daily business. Only to Lucy, it was anything but mundane. A young man was levitating a sign up onto what looked to be a brand new ice cream parlor, and a gaggle of fabulously dressed witches were coming out of a store labeled Twilfit and Tattings. There were a bunch of cages outside one shop filled with various hooting owls of all shapes and sizes, and an excited looking cat watched them hungrily from the crooked roof above. There were several colorful displays of what looked to be various potion ingredients, precarious leaning piles of cauldrons out front, and merchants piddling their wears to anyone who would listen. Lucy then looked to Tom to see, for perhaps the first and last time, a completely gobsmacked look on his face.

"You didn't believe me, did you?"

Slowly, he shook his head no.

"Will you forgive me now?" she asked for a second time.

He only looked at her wordlessly.

Tom the Barkeep, gestured them on with a bow and a flourish.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley."

**TBC...**

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: My adopted cousin is a sociopath.
> 
> I only realized this recently.
> 
> She came to stay with my side of the family a few years ago after her adopted parents kicked her out. I had no idea at the time, but I've since learned this was a completely reasonable decision on their part. I've always been a lonely kid, and she was only a few years older than I was, so I was actually pretty happy she was coming to stay with us. I thought we could be friends. And in the beginning, we were. Or so it seemed. It was all sunshine and roses. And this is usually the case with sociopaths. They tell you everything you want to hear. They know how to push just the right buttons to get the response they want from you.
> 
> However, unlike dear Tom, Michelle turned out to be a very _low functioning_ sociopath. After a while, it became very easy to see through her act. Back then, I had no name or label for what she was--I only knew that she was not who she presented herself as. Her actions did not match her words. She was fake in every way. She used people, and then discarded them. And to the very end, even when it was clear that I was no longer buying her bullshit and she was packing her bags once again, she still did not relinquish her mask. She had dedication; that, I will freely admit.
> 
> Does anyone notice the orphan correlation? J. K. Rowling obviously did, seeing as she's made great strides with her Lumos Foundation. She's helping reunite children in orphanages with their families. Granted, Michelle was a product of the American Foster Care System, but I digress... Though the few weeks she spent in my home were chaotic and disruptive to put it lightly, I'm glad I got to meet her. Hopefully, through her pale example, I might be able to do Tom some justice.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this story.


End file.
